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OWC 305 C — Novel III: Subtext, Theme, and Language

Quarter: Fall
Course Format: Flex Online (About Formats)
Duration: 10 weeks
Date(s): Sep 26—Dec 8
Refund Deadline: Sep 29
Units: 3
Tuition: $1240
Instructor(s): Ron Nyren
Limit: 14
Class Recording Available: Yes
Status: Closed
Please Note: No class the week of November 20
ACCESS THE SYLLABUS » (subject to change)
Fall
Flex Online(About Formats)
Date(s)
Sep 26—Dec 8
10 weeks
Refund Date
Sep 29
3 Units
Fees
$1240
Instructor(s):
Ron Nyren
Limit
14
Recording
Yes
Closed
Please Note: No class the week of November 20
ACCESS THE SYLLABUS » (subject to change)
This course is not open to the public, but rather by admission only. For more information on the Online Writing Certificate Program and its application process, please click here.

In this course, we will continue to build on the foundational elements of storytelling that have been laid down in the previous courses. We will home in on the relationships among present action, backstory, and subtext. We will ponder the crucial collision point between plot and characterization. Your novel's subconscious concerns will slowly rise to the surface as we delve deeper and try to uncover your theme. This course will have an extensive workshop component, so the focus will stay on the students’ novels. The goal will be for each student to complete a draft—however rough it may be—of their novel before thesis instruction.

RON NYREN
Former Stegner Fellow, Stanford

Ron Nyren’s novel The Book of Lost Light received Black Lawrence Press’s Big Moose Prize and was a 2020 Langum Prize finalist. His fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. He is the co-author, with Sarah Stone, of Deepening Fiction: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers. Nyren received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan.

Textbooks for this course:

(Required) Zadie Smith, On Beauty (ISBN 978-0143037743)
(Required) Jeanette Winterson, The Passion (ISBN 978-0802135223)